Daughter of Hate

by Blutus Mindpretzel

The war is over. Azula's motives remain unknowable as her child stands to shake the foundation of everything built since the fall of Fire Lord Ozai. For Toph, Mai, Aang, Katara and the rest, the world is an even more dangerous place than it was when they were children. And despite being long since gone, Sasuke's impact continues to shudder their world, perhaps more than they know.

38. Chapter 38

Chapter 38: Persona Non Grata

Sasuke hated it. Feeling his friends growing further away behind him, knowing the city was in danger if this wasn't a decisive victory then and now, and the abhorrent fact that he had failed his daughter, it made it easier by the moment to siphon the hate into his actions.

Koloss had kept its word, and better. The soldiers that it had offered the command of to Sasuke were a match for any spirit their size, and the ones that were larger were quickly swarmed by the armor-bound purple figures and toppled. Their number was far fewer than the total amount of spirits that had arrived at the doorstep of the Northern Water Tribe, but Koloss itself, reaffirmed in its great shell of a body, was evening the odds. Great palms swept down and sent spirits flying dozens at a time; some were destroyed on the mere impact of the giant striking them and Sasuke saw their bodies disintegrating as they were returned to the spirit world while the physical forms they had adopted were blown apart.

Even though Ursa's words echoed in his head almost mockingly with how true they were, Sasuke found he couldn't keep himself from the carnage. She was right; he was furious, he was practically shaking with hate, and there was nothing on his mind but to meet the spirits and pulverize them for what they had done and what they were threatening to do.

For a moment, he considered summoning Susanoo, but decided against it.

Not personal enough.

The spirits that weren't actively engaged with his shadowy soldiers were reforming and looked to be turning towards Koloss's giant form as though preparing to advance on it. It seemed a stupid thing to attack something so massive, but in truth, all they needed to do was get into the body, find Koloss's true body, destroy it themselves, and the giant would cease to be a threat. Some of the more imposing spirits had rallied near the front of the forces that weren't actively engaged against Koloss's soldiers and were bellowing orders, some in audible words, other through guttural roars that sounded more like primal raging than actual commands. Clearly, it had been identified as the greatest threat to the army, and they were getting ready to try and neutralize it.

Dead wrong.

Sasuke hit the side of the army with no reserve. His Chidori Kagutsuchi touched the first spirit his hand reached and impacted outwards in a billowing explosion of black fire charged with crackling Chidori. The raw energy of it backfired away from Sasuke blasted open the army and vaporizing dozens instantly. Flushing fresh Chidori chakra into his hand, Sasuke infused it with Kusanagi as he drew it back and sank it into the first spirit he saw that hadn't been utterly pulverized by his initial attack. The sort of barrier that all spirits seemed to have around them gave only the slightest bit of resistance before Kusanagi chewed through it and sliced the spirit in half as though it were through butter. It immediately seemed to burst apart and dissolve and Sasuke slid to a brief halt, the chakra in his feet allowing him to stand just atop the water in the bay.

His assault had blown open a gap in the army that the rest of them were rounding to fill. Spirits of all shapes and sizes formed a circle around him and Sasuke was unable to tell exactly how many there were preparing to bear down on his sole form. Chidori still surged through Kusanagi causing it to cast a sharp blue glow over the bay water.

To anyone else, the display of so many twisted and otherworldly creatures as they circled would have surely been enough to intimidate into submission, but Sasuke hadn't felt as fearless as he had at that very moment. For once, there was nothing to this; he wasn't facing a situation where Azula was nearly killing Ty Lee and fixing her obsessiveness on him, he wasn't having to do all he could to try and understand how he might comfort Ursa, he wasn't trying to balance Aang and Mai, both casting him looks that they didn't think he was catching onto.

I'm not doing everything in my power trying to keep my thoughts away from Toph.

There was no need to overthink this. Sasuke remembered how he had spent years on his own trying to temper his anger and hate, but all of that seemed pointless now with how those feelings were driving him.

Soza had been taken and everyone that Sasuke cared for was at risk.

And he knew fully well that there was only one way now forward.

When the spirits moved, he was already within their number. Kusanagi was a vibrant azure blur, flashing about him as he became a veritable cyclone of chakra-laced energy. Every spirit that he laid eyes on was met with a strike, and each strike was efficient and final. It wasn't like Ba Sing Se, where Sasuke had struggled to reopen his chakra flows and it had stunted his combat ability to a humiliating degree. Now, everything that he laid eyes on was cut down with a merciless speed. Though his mind was mostly a numb wall that kept his thoughts from wandering as he focused his body into an engine of pure destruction, Sasuke was distantly aware that he was averaging well more than a spirit a second. He didn't remain anywhere near close to where he had been with each passing second, moving faster than any human eye would have been able to reliably track.

As he fought, cutting a carnage ridden path through the army of spirits, he realized that they had started to not look like the array of bizarre creatures that he had initially saw them to be. The sounds they made were sounding less like animalistic roars and screeches as he tore his way through their number and more so like genuinely human cries of pain and adrenaline-soaked fear.

And then he saw himself on the edge of a forest, a sandy beach to his side that the surf gently washed over, an utter contrast to the scene being played out so viciously. Sasuke watched as his sword slash through painted and armed island natives while the forest beside him blazed in a deafening crackle of orange fire. The men before him stood no chance; struggling, they tried to mount a counterattack against Sasuke's onslaught, but one by one, they fell to his strikes.

He blinked, and he was once again gouging his way through the spirit army, untouched and invincible.

That was what it felt like too. Just being able to… give in to it.

It didn't matter who was before him, men or spirits. It didn't matter how that night on that island had never truly stopped haunting him, and it didn't matter that at present, all it was in his mind was fuel for the furnace of hate that burned within his gut; just as then, he was fighting to protect what he was in danger of losing.

And when that was all that was important to him, all else faded in relevance.

---

Aang's heart sank to his stomach as he watched Sasuke rip away from them, felt the shockwave that blasted outwards when Sasuke made contact with the army, and saw him disappear into the carnage now being waged between the spirits and the… whatever it was that he had brought back with him.

The scene had devolved into something right out of a nightmare and Aang could not have felt more alien to it than he did. As he stood near the edge of the harbor and watched war between two forces he didn't fully comprehend rage out over the bay, whipping up the waters into churning surf, bodies crashing into it and being launched into the air as devastating blows were traded in a collage of chaos. The giant that had stepped into the fray cast a shadow over the pale glow of the sun as it splintered the horizon; it swept up great numbers in its gargantuan hands, a towering obelisk that Aang would never have imagined in his wildest, darkest dreams.

He was so wrapped up in the sight that it took Sokka shaking his shoulder for Aang to realize he was being yelled at.

"Aang, move back!"

Blinking and feeling a rushing in his ears, Aang looked forward and saw a deluge of spirits arcing from the sky and heading straight towards them. Even with Sasuke, the giant, and the shadowy soldiers, the spirits' numbers were so vast that it seemed they were equally able to attack on any front they chose.

"They get past us, and they'll make it right to the city!" Yue yelled. "Chief Tangith was preparing to stand down before the spirits, the tribe's forces aren't ready!"

The panic in her voice was hardly concealed and Aang knew that she was thinking about her parents, but she had interjected a very valid point. Aang and his companions had gone to meet Kyoshi on the premise that they might be able to achieve some semblance of peace through such a meeting, but with Sasuke's arrival with such a force at his back and conflict erupting anyway, the situation had suddenly become quite dire. Aang tried to keep himself from freezing, but he found quite quickly that he needn't have worried as the spirits came within striking distance of them.

Lightning blasted from Azula's fingertips and sent the initial spirits reeling at the force of the blast. She leapt forward and a blaze of blue fire was summoned to life around her, but as Aang watched, the fire crackled sharply in an area around her rather than at the approaching enemy. Snow and ice shriveled away in the blink of an eye in a wide area around her and before he even had time to figure why Azula had gone and attacked the ground, Toph was at the princess's side; with the ground clear beneath her, it was clear that the harbor itself was composed of minerals, rock, and a plethora of things that were a fair bit closer to earth than frozen water. Coming near back-to-back with Azula, Toph thrust her fists up with a vicious intensity and pieces of the harbor melded into columns that slammed upwards and struck down any spirit that got close enough to them, Azula whipping about a firestorm beyond them that forced the attacking spirits down closer to where Toph could sufficiently hammer them with her earthbending.

Realizing his brow had furrowed at the sight of Azula and Toph not only fighting side by side, but seemingly working together, Aang could see the determination on both their faces.

They're not just fighting for us… they're fighting for Sasuke… and probably even more so for Soza.

One spirit slipped through Toph and Azula's paired attack and leveled out, flying straight for them. As it grew nearer, it was clear that its insect like appendages were serrated and would surely cut any of them in half without any effort whatsoever. The spirit didn't seem to consider the fact that the same fate might find it however, and it didn't even seem to notice Yue's blade until the greatsword connected with the front of it and cleaved it entirely in half as she launched herself to the side and intercepted it before its razor-sharp body could reach Jin who had been in its direct path. Eyes wide at the near miss, Jin looked to Yue with something like stunned appreciation, but the silver-haired girl had her eyes locked furiously on the advancing forces funneling towards them. She was wearing as intense an expression as Aang had ever seen and he never would have imagined that she would have been capable of such an aggressive look.

"Aang!" she shouted. "Get to the palace and tell the chief to get the army in motion! These things' shields might be resistant against the elements, but if there's anything that will help stave them off, a full force of waterbenders should do the trick!"

Katara stepped forward, looking intense herself, but there was a hesitancy to her motions that was unfamiliar to Aang.

"I can—" she started before a sharp reply from Yue cut her off.

"You can do nothing," she snarled and Katara looked shocked and affronted at such a furious response from her. "If you know what's good for you, you'll get back and stay put until this is done."

Over the crackling and rumbling of Azula and Toph going toe to toe with the spirts, Katara seemed to catch herself and swallowed, steeling her expression. She likely would have tried to argue Yue if not for Mai stepping up and putting a hand softly, but firmly on her shoulder.

"Katara."

She turned to look at Mai, her long brown hair tossing about her face and Aang could see the rabid conflict that Katara was fighting. Mai's expression was as passive as could be, but nothing could have kept the air of a threat from her voice.

"Back down."

Shaking for a moment, Katara grit her teeth and shook aside Mai's hand before bitterly walking back and away from the fight. In what could have been a moment of desperation, she put her eyes on Aang's but he couldn't keep himself from looking away from her.

In his heart, he didn't believe that Katara was any threat to them at that point, nor that she would do anything other than her best to try and protect everyone there. But there was no telling how much better she was feeling what with the limited healing and rejuvenation she had granted herself, and Aang didn't want her overworking herself.

Liar.

He swallowed the lump in his throat; of course he didn't want Katara overexerting her energy and putting herself in a bad way, but much more so than that concern was the worry about what he now knew.

She had betrayed Sasuke, she had betrayed Soza and Ursa, and truthfully, she had betrayed them all. Aang would never have guessed that she still was carrying such a hate for Sasuke that he had thought she had resolved back before the end of the Hundred Year's War, but it was clear that some level of disdain had been fueling her decisions to the point that she had openly decided that the best course of action was to side with the spirits, with Koh of all beings, and try to destroy Sasuke and his family. Sasuke himself, Soza, who was just a child, and now…

Aang thought that he might have been numb to surprises by now, but this one in particular was just as stunning to him as anything else he had experienced in past weeks.

Pregnant?

As though in sync with his thoughts, Ursa moved past him with a steeled expression of her own; she had found the swords that had been knocked from her hands and looked every bit as ready as Yue to do what she could to stave off the advancing spirits.

"Mom, stop!"

Zuko thrust himself in front of his mother, putting a hand on her shoulders. Her expression softened just for a moment as she looked at her son, but the steel returned just as quickly.

"Honey, get out of my way."

"I can't!" Zuko shouted, his face strained and pained. "Not when…"

His eyes flicked down towards Ursa's torso and she followed his gaze. Her mouth tightened into a dangerously thin line. Zuko looked rather as though he was a second away from having a frustrated breakdown and Aang could certainly imagine why.

Sasuke didn't just get with his mom… now Ursa's pregnant on top of everything else?

To know that Sasuke had not only had a child with his sister, but also now his mother, Zuko was probably in a very difficult place. Aang was rather stunned that Zuko was even able to rationalize what was going on, let alone have the wherewithal to be trying to stop Ursa just then.

"I'll be fine, Zuko," she said tersely and shrugged her shoulders to remove Zuko's grip. He didn't relent and gave her what looked almost like an involuntary shove; Ursa raised her eyebrows at him, and it was a rather bizarre sight to see the tall, imposing form of the Fire Lord seem to shrink weakly before the glare of his mother.

"Mom, if you're…" he struggled with the word briefly. "…pregnant, you can't be fighting! You think…"

He hit a verbal wall again and this time, it looked much harder for him to get the words out.

"…you think Sasuke would want you putting yourself in harm's way like that?!"

Ursa's back stiffened and at that moment, she rather looked like she didn't even recognize Zuko as her son.

"If Sasuke had wanted something like that, I'm sure he would have stayed with us rather than rushing in on his own," she very nearly snapped. There was a bitterness present that Aang wouldn't have expected to hear from her regarding Sasuke.

There was a lull in the spirits' advance, and Aang could see them regrouping and pulling back after finding the initial resistance they had met at the harbor too great. As Azula straightened alongside Toph, taking deep breaths, Zuko looked desperately at his sister.

"Azula!"

Turning her head over her shoulder, the princess looked at the scene playing out between her mother and brother. She said nothing, but as her eyes too flicked down also towards Ursa's belly, her expression strained and she whipped her head away without a word. It seemed that she didn't care much to get involved as she was no doubt trying to process the fact that she was now aware that she and her mother had both shared their wombs with Sasuke.

Beside her, Toph turned though as well, and took a few gentle steps back towards them. The rest of the group looked on uneasily, looking between the gathering spirits looking ready to advance on the harbor and what looked like what might be an explosion of emotion between mother and son.

"Ursa," Toph said softly; Aang knew his friend well enough to know that she was forcing the tone. "You have to get back. Get to the city, everyone here who can't bend is putting themselves in a ton of danger."

"We're all fighting for the same cause," Ursa replied coldly. "My being at a disadvantage doesn't change anything."

"Getting killed is hardly as noble as you're making it out to be," Mai muttered quietly and Ursa shot her a look as well.

"I have no intention of rolling over, just as I have no intention of running from this."

Toph's tailored calm tone was gone in an instant.

"This isn't about you!" she barked. Everyone looked to her as Ursa's eyes narrowed, but there was no reply. Toph took a deep breath, but while her voice mellowed, the anger was no less present.

"You and Sasuke care a lot about each other, we've all seen that. I've… I've been glad to see that in him. You make him so happy, and it clearly is something reciprocated, so much so that you both thought it would be a good idea to take this… this love to bed and…"

The stumbling over her words notwithstanding, there was so much emotion in Toph's voice that it likely would have been impossible to keep it from trembling as it was. Still, she gave a calming sigh and relaxed her shoulders.

"No matter how you feel about what responsibility you owe here, the baby growing inside you should take precedent."

It was clearly such a shocking thing that had been so abruptly revealed and the stunning nature of it still seemed to be settling. Mai, Yue, and Ty Lee in particular were looking deeply shaken, and Mai seemed unable to look at Ursa period. Toph continued to glare towards Ursa intently as she muttered a last word quietly.

"I'm surprised you of all people would take that for granted."

Throughout this entire confrontation, Aang had noticed just how unlike herself that Ursa seemed to be. During their ventures, she had almost seemed to take on a sort of motherly role within the group as a whole, dictating tasks, primarily organizing timelines and their movement all the way to the north, and always made sure there wasn't a single person uncounted for. It had been a rather warm realization to know that she was shouldering such a portion of the responsibility, something Ursa seemed quite comfortable doing.

But as her eyes filled with fire while looking at Toph, there was no mistaking that Ursa now looked much more like her daughter in worst case scenario rather than the mature, sensible and calm woman that she had been since Aang had met her.

"You… dare suggest—" Ursa started to hiss and Aang's heart dropped to his feet at the almost maddened tone her voice had taken, but before she could make it any further, Azula was suddenly there. Moving past Toph, moving past any of them, the princess was nearly nose to nose with her mother who, while slightly taller than her, suddenly seemed very much on equal footing.

"Go back, mother. Now."

Aang would have almost rather had heard Azula screaming like a banshee as she had done back on the airship. The warning menace in her voice was somehow much more unsettling than the maddened shrieking she had once used, but it was just another reminder that Azula was not the same person who had been drug off into the wilderness by Sasuke. So many of the pieces were still there, but the princess was much more than who she had been, and that was both a stunning and deeply worrying fact.

For a moment, Ursa and Azula burned into one another with unflinching stares until the daughter's eyes flicked down just briefly and by the time she had looked back from her mother's stomach to her eyes, Ursa had gave. Swallowing as though forcing down some exceptionally sickening morsel, her hands rather unsteadily sheathed her swords and she turned on her heel, marching back towards the city.

Feeling a similar relief that Aang expected Zuko was feeling as he watched the Fire Lord release a shaky exhale, he looked towards the spirits and saw a massive sort of minotaur spirit running up and down the front line that had gathered a few hundred meters away. It looked to be dictating orders and, feeling a deep sense of urgency, Aang decided to take charge.

"Everyone who can't bend, get back to the city walls and head towards the palace; find shelter there if you can, but duck inside if you can't get there and this all spills over," he said to the group. As he ought to have expected, there was certainly some grievance to be offered to that. Sokka and Suku exchanged looks while Mai shook herself into the conversation immediately.

"We're not pregnant, we can—"

"He's right, Mai," Ty Lee interjected. She too looked extremely strained, and her eyes kept flicking too to the spirit army raring to go any moment. Aang was glad at least some of them were minding that imminent danger.

"But—" Mai started, but Suki gave a defeated exhale and moved to follow Ursa, speaking bitterly over her shoulder as she did.

"Without a weapon like Yue's got, or bending, we're dead weight against these things. No reason to die proving that."

Sokka followed quickly after his wife and with a grimace, Jin tailed him. Mai didn't move but as Ty Lee stepped gently beside her and put a hand on her arm, she seemed to flinch as though she had just realized where she was. Looking to her right, perhaps to try and catch a last look at Sasuke, she released a frustrated sound and stomped after the others, Ty Lee just behind her.

Aang turned at the slight crunching of snow to his left and saw Katara approaching him. Rather unlike how she always was, there was a desperation in her eyes. Yue, Azula, and Toph all turned towards her movements with silent judgement, varying in hurt, anger, and venom. Zuko stepped forward too as if to say something, but he quickly turned away, putting them to his back. Katara looked as though she couldn't have cared less about any of them; to her eyes, it may very well have just been her and Aang, no one else, no spirits, no war.

"Aang…" she said in a voice just a whisper, and he realized she was asking permission. "Please. Let me help."

It was a curious feeling. In all the time he had known her, Aang had felt a thousand emotions for Katara, ranging from pure, unbridled love and care, to even hurt resentment from time to time.

But never in all that time had he felt betrayal like this.

All he wanted to do was tell her that it was okay, that he didn't hold this against her. But Katara had betrayed Sasuke, and through that choice, Soza, Ursa, all of them. Knowing that made his next words much easier to get out even as he choked just slightly on them.

"You've done quite enough."

She looked at him and her eyes began to shimmer; Aang truly hoped he wasn't going to have to ask her to leave, but after only a second longer, her face tightened through the difficulty of holding back the tears and she spun away from him, practically jogging after the others with her long, brown hair flowing behind her. Again, Aang nearly succumbed to his weakness as he wanted to reach after her and ask her to come back, but the bitterness in his heart wouldn't let him.

Katara… why?

A mournful question and one that would have to wait.

"I'll fly up to the palace and tell Tangith to mobilize. Then I'll be back and we'll hold them off until the army joins us," he informed the others. Toph, Zuko and Yue all gave nods in affirmative while Azula only released a dismissive exhale through her nose without turning to face him; he still could see how stiff her body was even as she offered a response most like something he ought to have expected of her.

"Oh, please. As if we won't be just fine on our own."

Not justifying Azula's arrogance with a response, Aang only gave her a worried look as he snapped open his glider and gave the group a nod before taking to the air. He flew over the harbor, over his friends staying behind to fight and the ones retreating as he gained altitude quickly, racing towards the city.

He couldn't keep concern regarding Azula out of his head. She seemed almost too at ease with the fact that her daughter had been taken, her mother was pregnant by the same man who had given her child, and that they were about to face down a spirit army. But when he thought to her stiffness and how she almost seemed to be struggling to keep her voice mellow, he was certain that all this and more was right on the forefront of her mind. Perhaps she shouldn't have been fighting, but even more frightening a prospect than fighting side by side with an enraged Azula was the idea of trying to tell her that she shouldn't be fighting period.

Streaking up the wall of the palace, Aang alighted over the plaza they had all been grouped at and landed clumsily beside where Chief Tangith stood, sliding a bit as he righted himself.

The chief stood nearly alone now. Only Lorna was by his side and members of his royal guard stood far back towards where the plaza led back into the palace as well as one of his most high-ranking generals who was looking ready for orders. Aang spared them a look before turning to Tangith.

"They tried to kill… us," he said quickly, nearly tripping over Ursa's name. He didn't know why, but he almost found he didn't want to know if the chief would have found the life of one woman worth the war that was now raging at the door of the city he had been tasked with ruling over. "They took Soza."

Lorna looked over at that, a streak of concern flashing over her usually composed face, but the chief hardly seemed to react. Aang looked at him with urgency, the seconds ticking by like torture.

"The spirits are attacking, and Sasuke's back!" he finally couldn't keep himself from saying. "He brought… I don't know, something back with them and they're fighting the spirits now!"

Realizing the true weight of what was happening, he blurted out, "We're fighting them now!"

Day after day had gone by since Ba Sing Se, and Aang had known how much he had hidden from this inevitability, disguising his mentality as a fraudulent belief that if they just kept running and hiding, then somehow this would all work out for the best in the end. Now, his friends were in danger, some of them fighting now as he spoke, Sasuke in the true thick of it all, fighting both Kyoshi and her army as well as his own rage at the fact that she had just spirited away his daughter. Aang had wanted so badly to believe that this day would never come, but reality was never so kind.

Tangith's eyes remained fixed almost hazily on the horizon as Aang spoke, but just when Aang had been ready to reach out and shake his shoulder in the state of panic and desperation he was in, the chief turned his head just slightly and spoke over his shoulder.

"General. All forces to the front wall. Engage freely and with… extreme prejudice."

The general who had been waiting at attention was back into the palace in the blink of an eye and only seconds later, a rumbling bellow of horns thundered out over the grounds. Though he couldn't see them, Aang knew that hundreds of Water Nation soldiers were moving to follow the chief's orders.

Still, Tangith didn't move. Seemingly transfixed, he looked out over the bay, at the sheer chaos that was threatening to engulf his entire world.

"You two…" he finally said quietly, and it didn't take much to know that he was addressing both Aang and his aide. Lorna leaned in almost too quickly; it was likely that she had been waiting on pins and needles for her chief to so much as say a word to her.

"Yes, sir?" she asked hastily and Aang too looked on attentively. Tangith's sight never left the horizon, and his voice sounded almost just as glazed over as his eyes looked.

"Was it just like this? Ten years ago?"

For a moment, Aang wasn't sure what he was referring to before he realized with a deep sense of dread what it was that the chief was asking of them. He exchanged a brief look with Lorna who had a sense of both reverence and sadness in her eyes. Swallowing down memories that he had been fighting with since the day they were made, Aang joined Tangith for a short spell before he would leap back over the side of the palace and return to the fray.

"Yes," he answered quietly. "Just like this."

---

Kyoshi had never imagined that an army the size of the one she commanded would be in need of having its numbers relegated so carefully, but with what they were now facing, she found herself having to dictate them much more efficiently than she might have needed to before the arrival of this… this force.

She had sent her top general, Rahmel, a minotaur shaped beast with bat-like wings to orchestrate the assault on the city. It hadn't been her wish to occupy the Northern Water Tribe, but if Sasuke and his company had been as dug in as it seemed they were, at least according to Koh's brief reconnaissance, then she had no choice. Rahmel was much like her, commanding tremendous respect from the other spirits and she had informed him that rather than fight out the young Avatar, his allies, and whatever the Water Tribe met them with, it would be better to simply overwhelm them with numbers. Just as with Ba Sing Se, no resistance would want to be offered when her forces were literally at the doorsteps of their citizens. During her time as Avatar, she had learned much about the way that opposing forces chose to conduct their battles, but one thing always rang true, be it an army, a battalion, a guerilla squad, a rebel group, or a lone person raising hell: remotely threaten the ones they care about in close proximity, and their will to fight would evaporate.

Kyoshi trusted Rahmel to handle that side of things. She on the other hand had quite the sizeable problem to overcome.

Drawing up alongside another of her generals, Omra, a lizardlike being that stood on her hind legs, Kyoshi felt the veritable shockwave that rushed over the water as the enormous giant swept aside another great number of her spirits. She watched as a fair portion of them disintegrated, their essence returning to the spirit world, but quickly honed her focus on the giant itself. The battlefield was no place for emotion.

"If this truly is the Koloss of legend," Omra stated before she could so much as ask, "then this body we see before us is nothing but a shell for the being controlling it within. If we can get inside—"

"The problem resolves itself," Kyoshi finished firmly. Koloss had been a being that even she hadn't possessed much bearing on, and it was only due to Koh's great age that she was able to learn from him a fair bit about the being Sasuke had attempted to hunt down. Having passed this information onto her generals, Kyoshi could only agree with Omra's sentiment.

"Form up your most nimble battalions," Kyoshi ordered. "When I've knocked it down, swarm it. Find whatever nook you can burrow into, blow your way inside if you must."

"Yes, Avatar Kyoshi," Omra replied dutifully and swept away into the spirits rushing about around the bay, trying to circle up around the giant and form some kind of perimeter. Kyoshi would rather have had the flying spirits under her command try and get at the monstrous being from its head, but with them all being thoroughly occupied with the armored essence beings that Koloss had brought with it, that was out of the question. And they were pressed for time as it was.

Drawing up her focus and energies, Kyoshi rose several dozen meters into the air and pulled in a deep breath. Earth and water burst up from under the bay beneath her as air and fire coalesced around her now swirling hands. She funneled more and more energy into the growing attack until a sphere of compressed elemental power was hovering in space before her, nearly the size of the giant's head. Koloss seemed to take notice of her then, and its great body started to right itself, leaning up and pulling back an arm to swing at her. Nearly shaking from the focus that the preparation was requiring, Kyoshi nearly smirked.

Not likely.

The sphere exploded outwards and away from her, creating a shockwave of its own at the mere speed it suddenly was being propelled with. Before the titan's arm could make it more than halfway through a swing, it was struck by her attack and with a blinding flash of light, its body gaze a powerful, seizing grown and it swelled backwards, falling to one knee which caused the water around it to erupt upwards and create massive waves as Koloss was staggered. The explosion that the attack had caused seemed to have practically dented its gargantuan chest and steam billowed out from where the strike had made contact. Beneath her, Omra and her spirits spilled from the army towards the giant, just the size of insects with how far away they seemed. Estimating that she could still hit Koloss yet again before her spirits reached it, Kyoshi drew in focus again, preparing to summon the same attack.

Forming in front of her once again, the sphere practically crackled with the raw and pure elemental energy she was focusing into it; this was a technique that Kyoshi had practiced many a time back when she had been the Avatar as it was as powerful a move as she could draw up without entering the Avatar State. It was as destructive as anything she could do, and she angled it again towards Koloss's chest to the same point that she had struck the first time. Frankly, she was stunned that the blow hadn't broken it open then and there, but if she could pierce its tremendous hide, it would certainly provide an easier job for her spirits.

As her arms snapped forward to release the attack, she saw the barest flash of a shadow out of the corner of her eye, and she had just a moment to react before pain blossomed outwards at the side of her head and she was suddenly falling fast and hard towards the bay. Through her fall, she watched as her attack sailed away a fair bit off course, soaring past the struggling Koloss and slamming into the glacial mountains that surrounded the Northern Water Tribe. Massive chunks of ice and rock calved away and plunged down hundreds of meters into the frigid sea below, water bursting up in a titanic spray at their entry. A moment later, Kyoshi too plunged into the water of the bay as well.

The shocking cold was something she hardly even noticed as she pushed the pain into the back of her mind. For a few seconds, the sounds of battle were distant and muted, and she found herself almost wanting to remain beneath the churning waves. It was so much more peaceful down there.

She burst from the water on a tide of her waterbending which shifted into her spiritual energy, flickering into a defensive aura around her, shimmering blue light that she found rather stupid that she hadn't had more ready. Hovering a few feet above the water's surface she looked across at the only possible thing that could have caught her with such speed and strength.

Sasuke was standing on the top of the water as though it were as solid and smooth as a tile floor. Waves lapped at his ankles, but the water beneath his feet never seemed to move. His hands hung at his side, but while his stance was almost casual, Kyoshi wasn't fooled; she knew well enough to recognize the tensing of his muscles, the tautness of his body, and the workings of his eyes. One flared with a violent black and red pattern while the other swirled with a light purple coloration, and Kyoshi could feel something like an invisible force press itself against her spiritual aura that protected her.

This was precisely the reason she had felt in such a time crunch to force the submission of the city and to defeat Koloss and those soldiers made of that purple essence. With those two variables out of the picture, it would be such a great deal easier to handle Sasuke himself, when she could throw herself and her entire army at him.

It was rather disheartening when she realized she was wondering whether or not that would even be enough.

Sasuke pulled his head back slightly and seemed to relax his expression just a touch, and Kyoshi felt the pressure against her defensive aura fade. While his face returned to what could be considered a calm look, the hate burning in Sasuke's eyes told her all she needed to know.

"I should have guessed I wouldn't be able to put you under genjutsu, not with that damnable shield around you," he said, his voice a clean and chilled addition to the sounds of battle around them. Kyoshi knew enough about Sasuke's fighting abilities to know that 'genjutsu' was some sort of illusion-based power he could cast.

"Did you really think it would be that easy?" she asked him, and he shook his head slowly at her, his lip curling slightly.

"I'm glad it wasn't," he snarled. "Beating you down will be a great deal more satisfying."

Kyoshi regarded him up and down for a moment before shaking her head a single turn to the left and right back at him.

"You have had every chance to relieve this world of the suffering it endures because of your presence. The people you care about are in every bit of danger that they could be, your daughter has been taken, and yet still you refuse to concede yourself?"

Sasuke's face lowered down, his head directed towards the surface of the water. His black hair fell over his face and Kyoshi could no longer see his expression. He remained as still as a statue for several long seconds before replying to her.

"I… have tried to leave well enough alone. I just wanted peace. For myself, for the people I care about. For… for my family. And yet, over and over and over…"

He looked up to her and the fury and burning hate on his face was as violent as Kyoshi had ever seen.

"…over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER!" he roared. "OVER AND OVER, I'VE BEEN DENIED THIS! I JUST WANTED TO BE LEFT ALONE!"

With the last word, a ripple seemed to shimmer across the water at the mere force of his shout. Sasuke seemed to catch himself then and bizarrely enough, he smiled. It was as cold as his voice was as his voice dropped back to a smooth, controlled pitch.

"But I get it now. I can't believe it took me this long, but I get it."

His hand rose, a finger pointing accusingly at Kyoshi.

"I only had to pull the problem up by the roots."

His eyes narrowed just a touch.

"I destroy you, I destroy every spirit that's dared come to try and force itself on my life and on the lives of my friends and family. I pulverize you until you've all been forced back into the spirit world, and then I follow you in and tear your world down."

A trickle of blood streamed down his cheek.

"I'll burn it all. You couldn't leave well enough alone, and now I'm going to annihilate everything you have. By the time I'm done, there will be no spirit world. There will be no memory of you or consciousness to survive, I'll burn it all down to the very fabric of its being."

His mouth split in a savage grin.

"Starting with you."

---

It was almost disappointing to Sasuke.

When he and Kyoshi had first met in battle, he had been in a difficult place both physically and mentally. He was trying to cope with the fact of seeing all his friends again and being forced to realize that he was in fact a father. After being so certain that his chakra was causing a rift between the physical and spiritual world, he had closed off his chakra flows to the purest, most bare minimum, and had only reopened them around the moment he had been confronted by the spirits. He hadn't known exactly what it was he was fighting with Kyoshi and before he could get a grip in their battle, it had come to a close, leaving him frustrated, tired and very nearly broken.

He had seen her again just briefly when they had met in the skies near above the Fire Nation and Sasuke had arrogantly assumed that his Susanoo would be enough to blow her away, and she had humiliated him by using her form of the Avatar State to siphon at his chakra in a single, powerful attack. The encounter had left him frustrated and itching for another chance to meet her in battle.

And now, she had arrived to stand before him again, threaten his friends and loved ones, and face off once more.

And Sasuke couldn't have felt less in danger from her.

He hadn't spent a single moment restraining himself or letting her initiate to learn her attack patterns and fighting style. He hadn't played it tactfully in the slightest or considered taking on Kyoshi in a manner that would put him at the least risk.

It would have been disappointing if Sasuke hadn't been feeling such savage pleasure just then.

Not bothering to dedicate any chakra to protecting himself, Sasuke had exploded onto Kyoshi in an all out offensive. He hammered at her with Kusanagi, Fire Release, Chidori, Amaterasu, phantom strikes from parts of his Susanoo, anything and everything in his arsenal. It almost seemed as though she hadn't expected it, and within seconds, he had put Kyoshi onto nothing short of a sheer defensive style.

Besides her spiritual aura, she threw up walls of water to block of soften his attacks, used air to move herself swiftly out of harm's way, fire to escape his vision, even drawing up earth from beneath the bay to try and deflect his attempts to reach her. In the split seconds where they were close enough to see one another, Sasuke saw that her expression still hadn't changed, but there was no denying that he was vastly overpressuring her. Each moment that Kyoshi made an attempt to gain ground, to twist away from him and give herself distance to recover or perhaps even attack herself, Sasuke was on top of her. He practically clung to her like a leech, never giving her even the briefest moment's respite as he slammed everything he could think of onto her. What she wasn't able to dodge or deflect crashed into the blue shield that was protecting her, and with each successive blow, Sasuke watched it waver with vicious satisfaction.

Finally seeming to understand that Sasuke was not going to relent in the slightest, Kyoshi seized at one of the only chances she could manage; finding the smallest window as she slipped underneath a handful of Chidori, she drew up a great wall of fire behind her and drew swiftly to a halt through the use of her airbending. Giving a yell of exertion, she sent the flames cascading heavily down on Sasuke while throwing up a geyser of water underneath him with pressure sufficient to split stone. As the two collided where Sasuke had been, she took a moment to catch a look at the damage she had dealt to him, her breathing coming in fast and heavy.

Sasuke was able to see this all from where he was behind her; as his water clone faded away into the bay along with the rest of the liquid she had summoned against him, he let a venomous smile plaster itself onto his face as he whipped around and through a powerful kick into the Avatar, battering her and sending her spiraling down into the bay once more. Kyoshi was just able to right herself before touching the water, adjusting her airbending beneath her to keep her from being thrown under the wave again. Seeming to almost grimace, she righted herself gingerly and looked up towards him.

"You've gotten—"

She got merely the two words out before Sasuke shot down and streaked across the surface of the water like a bolt of pure light; drawing Chidori and Amaterasu around his body, he blew into her like an elemental battering ram. Kyoshi was blasted a kilometer backwards to slam into the side of the glacial mountain where her missed attack had blown such a piece off of, her body impacting with a distant booming retort.

Sasuke gave himself just a moment to pull in a deep breath of cold, morning air. Then, he was blasting back down over the waves to meet Kyoshi once more. Though he knew well enough that he needed to end this quickly, the hate searing a hole in his middle was hoping, almost praying that she wasn't yet out of the fight. There was still so much more hurt he wanted to inflict upon her.

---

By the time the first number of waterbenders had reached the harbor, Aang was genuinely glad to see them. And it actually wasn't because he thought they needed the help.

Between him, Azula, Toph, Zuko, and Yue, the five had formed into a seamless and wordless mechanism that was doing as fine a job as he might have expected in holding back the spirits' push to the mainland. Just as they had started, Azula and Toph had fallen back into the routine they had adopted; still so strange to see the two of them working so fluidly and willing together, Zuko had joined his sister and the firestorm raging had become as equally orange as blue in color. Just as much to direct the attacking spirits as destroy them, brother and sister forced the spirits along a vast canal they had drawn up with their flames and the ones that weren't burnt away before they reached the harbor were immediately slammed apart by Toph's earthbending as she took the pieces of the harbor that Azula had cleared for her and blew apart any glowing entity that got too close. And the scant few that made it past her were sliced apart by Yue's greatsword. The silver-haired girl fought with a furious resolve that Aang would never have thought he would see out of her, and her blade cut through the spirits like butter. Not to be held content by his friends' success, Aang had taken to the air, doing fast and frequent sweeps across both their flanks and blowing back any attempt by the spirits to work around the fiery pass that Azula and Zuko had formed.

In the back of his mind, he was paying close attention to what was happening further back. The minotaur spirit seemed to be almost pacing at the head of the army, growing more and more frustrated by the way it held itself. Beyond, Aang had seen the giant that nearly blotted out the sun nearly topple at an explosion that had rocked its body and a stream of spirits were struggling to mount its body, no doubt prying for a weakness.

If we lose that thing… holding back this army will get a lot harder.

The waterbenders formed a line along the wall that split the harbor from the city and, working in unison, a formidable wave was summoned that roared higher and higher into the air until it must have been over a hundred meters high. Shimmering dark walls of ocean flowed before Aang and upon taking a look at it from a higher vantage point, he saw that the city was effectively blocked off; the looming wall of water stretched in either direction around the firestorm that had been woven in its middle and there became no place for the spirits to effectively attack from.

"Avatar!"

Hearing the word shouted at him as he made a close pass, he braked and alighted near his friends. Though Azula's face was still tight with concentration as she worked alongside her brother, she snapped at him, her voice crisp and just audible over the roar of the water and fire.

"Get me to the giant! It'll be faster than if I fly myself!"

Aang realized that he hadn't been the only one noticing the state of their unknown ally that was looking more and more like it was in danger of being capsized by the number of spirits streaking up its body, and he looked at Azula with a tentative look. He knew that his airbending could carry them faster than Azula could by using her firebending to propel herself, but that didn't explain precisely why she wanted him to accomplish this in the first place.

"Are you sure you—"

"Now!" she barked at him and Aang swallowed before whipping up his airbending and taking to the sky again, Azula in tow, born aloft by a cushion of air.

"Higher!" she commanded him and he obliged, taking them up swiftly. As they passed the highest point of the giant's head, Aang looked down at the specks below that had become the spirits and waterbenders, and he truly got a sense of just how massive the giant truly was.

"Do you have a plan?" he shouted at Azula, loud enough to be heard over the rushing wind. She didn't look at him, her eyes locked in focus on the massive body below them.

"Drop me!" she barked back at him.

Aang stared at her, utterly bemused by her request.

"What—"

That was all he could manage before Azula glared at him, her eyes flashing dangerously.

"NOW, AVATAR!"

Feeling his body tense as Azula roared at him, Aang took no more time to consider what she was asking and did as ordered.

Azula dove through the sky, angling her body towards the giant. There was no franticness in her movements, no sense that she even realized that she was falling from a height that would kill a person no matter what upon impact on the water far below. Aang tucked and followed after her, not sure of her plan, but not willing to let her fall to her death if that was somehow some insane part of her plan.

As she passed just by its head, Azula extended her arms on either side of her and her back arched harshly before, with a bellow of exertion that Aang could hear even over the howling of the wind, she threw her arms down directing them towards the giant.

Great forks of lightning blistered out from her extended limbs, crackling away from her with all the intensity and power of a thunderstorm. It split the sky before them, blinding bolts of blue energy striking the giant and rippling across its entire body, setting it all alight in a bright azure effect that almost made it look like it was coming apart.

Looking down, Aang saw Azula's body go slightly limp as it continued to fall, and he shot down and caught her under the arms. She winced slightly at his rather rough handling of her, but Aang was more concerned about getting her back to the ground than making her ride down a comfortable one. Within seconds, they had made a furiously quick descent, just as quick as the journey up. Zuko rushed to them as they landed and Aang released Azula with a wince of his own as his ears popped from the swift change in altitude. He could hear the Fire Lord hurriedly asking his sister if she was alright, but Aang found himself turning to look back out over the bay.

In the absence of the firestorm, the waterbenders had closed up the wall, but Aang could still make out shapes through the vast barrier that had formed in protection of the city. The giant had become a great shadow, the spirits tiny glowing dots. As he looked closely, he saw them falling away from the giant shadow like a swarm of dead flies. Swallowing, he clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling his sweaty palms cold and clammy from anxiety.

I suppose that worked.

Behind him, Azula was struggling to her feet. Her expression was still twisted in focus, but she had gone terribly pale, and her knees wobbled as she tried to stand.

"Azula, it's okay, just—" Zuko said, reaching for her in an attempt to support her, but she knocked aside his hand weakly.

"I don't need your help!" she hissed angrily. Aang fully expected Zuko to continue trying to offer his help to her, but in a show of restraint, he merely stood by his sister in silence. He didn't move away, but he didn't make a move to help her again either; after a long moment, and with great reluctance, Azula gingerly reached out and put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, her face darkening as she did. Aang saw Zuko's face flicker with emotion for a moment as his sister propped herself up on him.

"Aang, what's the play now?" Toph asked breathlessly. Yue too was nearly bent double, her sword resting its point on the ground before her as she seemed to also struggle to catch her breath. In truth, none of them looked or sounded that good, but after what they had just been put through, it made sense.

"I'm not sure," Aang said with a frown, looking from the wall of water and then back to the waterbenders keeping it there. They were stretched out behind them, the closest one several dozen yards away and Aang couldn't see a commanding officer among them.

"We need to find one of Tangith's generals. I think our best bet has to be to trust Sasuke and these new players to take on the army. As long as we can keep the city protected, we—"

Yue murmured then, cutting him off. Her voice was airy and distantly confused.

"Wait…"

Aang looked to her and saw her brow furrowing as she looked ahead, sweat beading down her rosy cheeks. He followed her gaze and looked out towards the wall of oceanwater and beyond.

Looking through the water, the spirit army had become a wall of glowing blue light, stretching from left to right about as far as Aang could see. But as he looked more closely, he noticed something very strange.

The blue wall seemed to be getting… smaller?

It didn't make any sense to him until Zuko offered the only solution that made sense, the only thing that it could be.

"Are they… retreating?"

There was no doubt about what they were seeing. The spirits were withdrawing, their entire front pulling away from the city. Aang watched as they drew further and further away with every passing second and he felt his jaw slacken at the sight.

But… why?

An explosive shockwave erupted out from just behind him, nearly knocking him off his feet. The force of it sent wind rushing past him furiously and he yelled in shock, spinning on his feel. Zuko moved quickly in front of Azula, shielding her from whatever it was that had just touched down so closely to them and Toph and Yue both leapt into readied stances as well. Aang assumed that this had been a ploy after all, and the spirits had somehow gotten past the shadowy warriors and made it around behind them, and he prepared to unleash all the bending he could to deal with them.

But the sight that greeted him was not all what he could have expected.

Resting on her back in a crater that had been formed at her violent arrival, Kyoshi looked skyward, her eyes looking like they were struggling to maintain focus. Her robes were torn and rent, exposing cut skin to the frigid air. Her headpiece was missing and her hair flowed around her in the snow, a cascade of brown. Her warpaint was smeared, mixing with the blood and bruises that now were spread over her face.

No matter the circumstances, Aang couldn't help feeling a surge of incredible dread at seeing someone whom he had known to be so powerful and unstoppable in her life lain so low before him.

Sasuke was atop her, knees on either side of her lap. He might have been a noticeably smaller person than she was, but his figure could not have been more imposing than it was as he glared spitefully down at her. There was no sense of compassion or mercy on his face as he glared viciously down at Kyoshi and before Aang had time to react, he had slammed a several brutally hard punches into her face.

After the seventh strike, he grabbed her collar and pulled her head up slightly.

"I could hit you until you were nothing more than a bloody stain… but as it stands, you have something I need."

He seemed to practically exude rage, rippling out from him in a dark shadow as he leered down at her.

"Where is that fucking monster, Koh?"

Kyoshi said nothing in response to him, only managing to swallow with what looked like a great deal of effort. Sasuke let the silence hold for a few eternal seconds before his fist slammed down again, smashing her head back into the ground and the blow seeming to create a booming shockwave of its own.

"Where is he?!" Sasuke snarled and Kyoshi blinked blearily up at him.

"To kill him?" she asked hoarsely, her strong voice still carrying through. Sasuke's mouth curled upwards in an almost hideous grin.

"Not just. I'm going to make him hurt; I'm going to make him hurt even worse than what I've done to you. You all thought that drawing yourselves back into his world as physical beings would be what it took to stop me, but all its done is made it so much easier to rip you to pieces."

His eyes narrowed.

"But if you're so reluctant to answer that, perhaps you'd see fit to answer this."

His fingers reached down again, curling like talons around Kyoshi's throat. He brought his face down very close to hers.

"Where… is my daughter?"

Beside him, Aang felt Azula, Zuko, Toph, and Yue all just as tense as he was, their feet practically glued to the snow beneath them, not willing or able to move as they looked on in silent shock and horror at what they were whispering. In recent weeks, Aang had developed a great many resentful emotions for his fellow Avatar, but as he looked at Kyoshi lain out in the snow, looking like she was barely able to breathe, he silently begged her to just answer Sasuke truthfully as to not have to withstand any more punishment.

As it was, and as he ought to have expected, Kyoshi was not one to surrender in any way she was able.

"You doomed her the moment you conceived her," the Avatar practically whispered up at Sasuke. "She was marked for death the moment she was expelled from that princess's womb; it was merely a matter of time."

Just slightly, her head tilted back and forth in the snow, shaking at him with an almost condescending sort of motion.

"You can't save her."

Above her, Sasuke had grown as still as statue. It almost looked as though he hadn't processed what it was that Kyoshi had just told him and Aang wondered if Sasuke was so caught up that perhaps he hadn't even understood what it was that she had said. His black eyes continued to gaze down at her without any real sense of comprehension.

Then, his face erupted into a mask of raw and unrestrained ire, his lips pulling back over gritted teeth, his brow angling sharply and his eyes practically spitting with hate. His fists came back, and he began to pummel Kyoshi with reckless abandon, raining blow after blow against her face with no sense of pattern or rhythm or aim. Every motion was fueled by nothing more than his rage.

"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!" he roared. "GIVE HER BACK TO ME! YOU GIVE HER BACK, BRING HER BACK, I'LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU, I'LL KILL ANYONE WHO SO MUCH AS TOUCHES HER!"

Aang was feeling sick to his stomach as he looked on to what was before him. He hardly even recognized the young man before him anymore, so lost in his feelings as Sasuke clearly was. Pure frustration and hate, all brought on by fear for his daughter had seemingly turned him into exactly what it was that the spirits had claimed him to be.

Demon.

Kyoshi's body was limp beneath his deluge of strikes and Aang felt nausea as he stepped forward, extending a hand weakly.

"Sasuke… stop… please…"

He couldn't manage to get his voice above a pathetic moan, and even if Sasuke could have heard him, Aang imagined that nothing was getting through to Sasuke's ears over his sheer unleashing of hate. He continued to bellow down at Kyoshi who likely was long since knocked out and perhaps very nearly dead by this point, and still he released strike after strike as though he were carrying out his aforementioned desire to reduce her to a bloody stain.

Desperately, Aang turned to the others, hoping for some sort of help he could procure from them. Zuko looked just as ill as Aang felt and Yue had turned away, her face tightened as tears tracked down her cheeks. Rather disturbingly, Azula looked almost in awe of what she was witnessing; Aang was reminded unpleasantly of the times in their past where she had looked on to Sasuke's acts of violence with a similar expression and he forced himself to tear his eyes away from the princess.

Wait.

He suddenly realized that their number had fallen to four.

Where's Toph?

He realized just after that revelation that it had grown eerily silent. Hardly daring to, he looked forward and felt his heart splinter as he did.

No longer standing at their side, Toph was now over Kyoshi's body as well but her back was to them. No part of her body rested on the Avatar's battered body, but her arms were thrown around Sasuke in a deep, tight embrace. Her chin rested on his shoulder as she held him tightly and Aang looked to see Sasuke's face so ravaged by conflict it looked like he was about to fall apart in Toph's arms. Every part of his expression looked like he was desperately trying to cling onto the hate that had been so driving him, but it was locked in battle with a softening in his eyes. Just faintly, Aang could hear Toph whispering something to Sasuke, words that couldn't quite be heard, but they seemed to work a magic that Aang wouldn't have been sure could even exist just then.

With a great, shuddering heave, the fight seemed to leave Sasuke's body. His shoulders slumped, his fists unclenched, and his face went from twisted and hateful, to tired and bitter. Moving just slightly to the side, he moved off of Kyoshi's lap to fully fall into Toph's embrace. His head bowed and he pressed it to her chest as he sat in the snow and she continued to kneel beside him, holding him there.

It was clear that Toph was quite caught up in her own emotions, but she still managed to look back at them and she mouthed words urgently at them.

Get going.

Swallowing a lump that had risen aggressively in his throat, Aang scrambled forward towards Kyoshi's body, Yue at his side.

The Avatar was very clearly unconscious, and she very well could have been dead if her chest hadn't been rising and falling with a real sort of weight, as though every breath was a struggle for her body. Kyoshi's face was nearly lost behind the smear of red, black, and white that covered it. Throwing a look over his shoulder, Aang realized with a start that he could no longer see a single blue glow beyond the wall of the ocean that had been raised in defense. Swallowing again, he looked back down to Kyoshi, wondering just how it was that a victory could feel so terribly hollow.

---

The minutes that followed were something of a blur for Aang. While Yue and Zuko stood guard over Kyoshi's body and Toph continued to cradle a seemingly ruined Sasuke with Azula standing close by to the both of them, he shot off towards the waterbenders who fortunately didn't seem to have noticed much of what had just occurred between Sasuke and Kyoshi given how strung up with concentration they were in their task. Moving past them, Aang reentered the city where he saw legions more waterbenders ready and willing to march to war should it be asked of them, none of them seeming to realize what had just occurred beyond the city walls. Aang flashed past them all and flew directly back to the palace where he alighted before a silent Chief Tangith and explained what had happened.

Operating with as level a head as Aang would have expected of the chief, Tangith ordered the streets cleared of both soldiers and civilians; many of the city's inhabitants had started to stream from their dwellings as with the echoing sounds of battle having faded away, they were surely curious to see perhaps what had happened. When the city was devoid of any signs of life, Aang, Zuko, and Yue escorted Toph through the city, who bore Kyoshi's body on a floating slab of earth. Aang hadn't even considered that the sight of Kyoshi might cause a serious state of unrest amongst the city's dwellers, and he was deeply glad that Tangith had his wits about him enough to take that into account. Aang's mind was a fuzzy mess at best, and he was deeply glad he wasn't the one issuing orders. Despite Toph's reluctance, they had allowed Azula to walk close to Sasuke's side with an arm around him, guiding him back towards the palace as his apathetic and hollow state seemed to require. Her expensive use of bending aside, Azula had found a fresh burst of energy at the prospect of holding onto Sasuke as they walked back through the city, but as she held him, her usual sense of obsessiveness over Sasuke didn't seem to be present. Rather, she looked quite calm and focused as she pressed close to him and helped him stump his way back to the heart of the capital.

Just before they had reached the city's outer wall, the strangest thing occurred; a strange apparition of a being, frail, weak, and horribly ill-looking appeared in front of Sasuke, wrapped in bandages. Azula yelled in shock at the sight and leapt away, preparing to attach as she shouted at Sasuke to get away from it. She and the rest only could look on however as the hovering being said something to Sasuke in a voice too quiet for them to hear and for him to reply with a dead look on his face and in his eyes, just as quietly. The small creature seemed to remain there a moment longer before whispering something else and disappearing. At a distant rumble, Aang looked over his shoulder and saw the giant begin to move away, heading around the side of the mountain that wrapped near the capital. The armored beings seemed to have also vanished, no sign of their dark aura in the sky. They all looked to Sasuke, but whatever it was that had just happened, he wasn't in the mood to elaborate. Gently, Azula moved back to his side and, once again, they walked silently back into the city.

Once within the palace, they had found the others. It was a rather disheartening reunion; Suki and Mai both still seemed deeply upset by the fact that they hadn't been able to help, Jin and Ty Lee looked like they were just keeping it together by holding onto one another, though they seemed deeply relieved to see Toph in perfectly fine shape. Ursa perhaps was the most concerning of a reaction to Aang; her eyes had snapped to Sasuke the moment he had come into view and though she had made a very strange movement in his direction, she had frozen in place thereafter, not so much as saying a word. She had locked eyes with her daughter and a great flurry of emotion had flashed between them, challenge, remorse, jealousy, pain, too much to even make sense of what each of them were feeling more of. But in the end, Ursa stepped back as they passed by, saying nothing to Sasuke nor making to reach for him. Her head turned down and she closed her eyes, and though Sasuke still seemed to be in a complete state of apathy and dejection, Aang saw his eyes flick Ursa's way as he passed her.

Kyoshi was taken to a windowless room within the palace's first floor rather than the dungeons. In a room just as that, there would be no interaction with guards or soldiers, and they would be able to keep her presence there a secret. Sokka had made the suggestion to put her there and the chief had agreed; Aang himself had drawn up his energies and coalesced a barrier around Kyoshi's unconscious form, generated by pure elemental power.

"I was able to figure out this technique years back when Zuko and I had to face down that band of rogue firebenders," he had explained quietly to the others as the sphere finished forming around Kyoshi. "I got the idea from the elemental energy that forms around me when I'm in the Avatar State. The power is directed inward to prevent benders from using their bending to break free. If you apply any bending to the outside of it, it'll come down, but from within… I don't think even Kyoshi can make it out of that."

After a few more moments of looking at her motionless form trapped underneath a dome of crackling elemental energy, they left the room. Tangith had told barely a half dozen of his staff that they had none other than Avatar Kyoshi under lock and key within the palace, and Aang could understand why. He was present in the room when he told Lorna, another of his advisors, and his top four generals of the situation and every single one of them had reacted in utter disbelief. A being who stood in the realm of legend by that point, one of the most renowned Avatars to have ever lived, and someone who should have been dead for many decades now was just behind a door on the first floor of the palace? Still, the chief seemed to have his reasons for trusting each of them and he assigned the generals, all of whom were powerful benders in their own right, to take turns patrolling the first floor and making sure no wandering soldier or servant accidentally stumbled into the room.

As the chief adjourned their meeting, asking the group to meet with him again later that afternoon, a muttered remark from Mai made Aang realize just how tired he was. A restless night's sleep into this chaos filled morning and his eyelids immediately began to droop. Sokka suggested quietly that they all take a power nap before they needed to meet with Tangith again and rather unceremoniously, the group disbanded.

Shoulder to shoulder, Toph, Jin and Ty Lee made for the sanctity of their beds and Mai followed after them with an almost lonesome stride. Zuko murmured something about not being that tired and wandered off on his own. Sokka seemed to almost zone out standing in the middle of the hall and Aang felt his heart pang as he felt he knew perfectly well why. Suki took his hand gently and guided him away, giving Aang a deeply somber look as they passed. Ursa headed towards her own room without a word, and Aang saw her hand drifting almost unconsciously to her stomach and he thought he saw her eyes glistening as she walked out of sight.

Azula seemed the only one with a specific destination she was looking to head towards, and she marched off rather purposefully, and it was only then that Aang realized that he hadn't seen Sasuke since they had left the chief's chambers.

Finding himself standing alone in the hallway, he slowly paced his way back towards his own room. His steps seemed to echo loudly as though he were stomping with all his might as he walked. When reaching the door, he opened it and stepped inside almost gingerly, and when Aang's eyes fell on the empty room, he felt his throat seeming to swell while his gut churned miserably.

He was unable to convince himself to climb into the bed, not alone anyway. Sitting down at the front of it, he pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them, pressing his forehead down and letting the tears come. How cruel was it that the one person who he knew would be able to alleviate his pain was the last person he thought he would want to talk to.

---

Katara's eyelids tensed slightly as the door that led into the dungeons was pulled open with a wrenching creak, sending pale light spilling into the dark room. Her cell was directly in front of the door so the light stretched from it directly over her, created a bright pane that only seemed to make the darkness around her more deep by comparison. She was sitting on her cot, her arms resting on her thighs with her head bowed as a shadow split the rectangle of light that had spread from the door, a shadow in the silhouette of a man. She raised her eyes to look at the figure with an appraising stare.

"I thought orders were that I wasn't to be seen by anyone?"

The figure said nothing and Katara supposed it was a rather stupid question. Sasuke had a vast number of ways he could have dealt with the guards at the door, all of which would have no doubt required minimal effort.

He stepped into the dungeons, his front completely cast in darkness due to the light striking his back. Katara kept her eyes on him as he slowly paced right up in front of the bars that kept her within her cell. His head tilted slightly to the right and left as he examined her living space.

"Awfully kind of you to play along," he said in a soft and deadly tone. "I imagine you could use waterbending to get free of this cell pretty quickly."

Looking to the bars, Katara gave a small shrug.

"These cells were designed to hold waterbenders. The walls and ceiling are extremely reinforced and the metal on the bars is freeze resistant and would take a good bit of power to pressure water to cut through."

Sasuke looked at her.

"So… pretty quickly," he affirmed and Katara almost cracked a smile at that.

"Yeah," she replied. "Pretty quickly."

For just the briefest moment, there was the sense that things were just fine between them. But Katara knew that nothing could be further from the truth, and she couldn't keep from bowing her head, unable to keep her eyes on Sasuke any longer. He continued to stand before her, and she grit her teeth; she found that she genuinely wanted him to start shouting at her. She wouldn't even have minded if he wanted to hit her. Something about just receiving some form of comeuppance for her actions would have made his looming there so much less damning.

But of course, Sasuke didn't take it where she found herself wanting it to go.

"You didn't need to go through all this trouble if all you wanted was to talk to me," he said. Quip aside, there was no humor in his voice, just a buried pain that he was trying to restrain. Katara let out a short and exhausted laugh at this, raising a hand to press against her forehead tiredly.

"You're harder to get on your own than you realize," she replied.

It was quiet again and Katara forced herself to focus on the consistency of her breathing, anything to distract from the emotions that she had been keeping in check for weeks now. And it took Sasuke only a single question to nearly break her resolve entirely.

"Why did you do it?"

There should have been a venomous hate in his voice, the same tone that he had used to address Kyoshi, but Katara heard only a strained and subtle hurt, and a genuine curiosity to know what it was that had forced her hand. She didn't reply and continued to shakily rub her forehead even more intensely, trying to push down the sick feeling in her stomach.

Ahead of her, Sasuke took a step that brought him right up to the bars of her cell.

"Is this about us?"

The shaking in her hand disappeared on the spot. Slowly, she turned her head up to look at him and found she could just barely make out the glints of his eyes in the shadow that was his figure.

"Us?" she asked quietly. "You think this is about us?"

He continued to stare down at her motionlessly.

"There was a part of me that believed that you and I weren't as at odds as we were when we met a decade ago," he replied. "I know for a fact that there… was more going on then was ever discussed between us, but when you weren't trying to kill me anymore, I thought perhaps things had mellowed."

One of Sasuke's hands reached out and wrapped around the iron bar closest to him. Katara didn't dare look at it to see how hard he was clamping his grip on it.

"But you took Soza away from me. You tried to kill Ursa."

The metal gave a twisted rending sound in his grasp.

"You tried to kill me. And you put this entire city at risk doing it along with the lives of your friends, your brother, and Aang."

Hearing this, Katara couldn't keep herself still. She shot to her feet as though she had been jabbed in the rear with a pin and swallowed as she stared fiercely through the bars back at Sasuke.

"Then there you have it, Sasuke," she hissed. "I'm just as selfish as you are. I risked so much for nothing more than…"

She trailed off as she wondered what it was she genuinely wanted to say. Swallowing again, she shook her head and began to pace back and forth in the small area she was afforded to do so.

"Because of us? You and me? Please."

Katara kept her eyes on her feet as she slowly walked back and forth; the rhythmic motion of putting one in front of the other was strangely calming to her.

"Yes, I suppose back then I… I felt attraction towards you. I don't know how a girl couldn't. Handsome, mysterious, strong, everything I suppose I could have wanted on the surface. But more than that… I was attracted to your power."

Saying it aloud gave the confession a very strange feel and Katara realized that she had never shared this with anyone and had certainly not expected to spill it to Sasuke of all people.

"I wanted to be above that power. To be the dominant one. I…"

Running fingers through her long brown hair, she tightened her lips.

"Yeah, there was a part of me that wanted to be with you. You intrigued me unlike anyone I've ever felt attracted to before, and I guess there was a part of me that could barely stand to see you leave that morning in Ba Sing Se."

Drawing to a halt, she stopped and turned to look at him through the bars. She was feeling strange then, suddenly very defensive and frustrated with the man standing before her.

"But you know what I did? I did the one thing that I don't think I single fucking person in the group other than me could manage."

She walked right up to the bars so that she was nearly nose to nose with him. Sasuke's anger formed a nearly palpable aura, but Katara found it didn't frighten her.

"I moved on. No one else seemed to; every time you were mentioned or your name was brought up, it was like the air had just been sucked out of the room. Mai's been in and out of her relationship with Zuko since the day you left, and I'm betting it's not just because they're having trouble. I've overheard Jin and Ty Lee talking about how Toph, no matter how tough she seemed on the outside, they'd sometimes hear her crying at night when the three of them would get together. Did you know she hasn't even tried dating in the last ten years? She's grown into this beautiful woman, her personality and looks have had boys chomping at the bit for a go with her, but she never so much as considers giving them a chance!"

Sasuke shifted as though he were going to interject, but Katara was on a roll now. The words that spilled from her spoke to the frustration that she hadn't so much as even thought about saying aloud to anyone in all the years they had been plaguing her.

"For as happy as she seemed to just have a kid to lord over everyone with, Azula never went after a suitor either. She could have picked any man in the Fire Nation she wanted—"

Or woman, Katara thought miserably, thinking of the abusive relationship she had hidden from the world with Ty Lee.

"—and yet she just remained on her own, raising Soza and acting almost like she knew you would come back! And no one was ever willing to talk about you with each other, because you represented something different to everyone, and when we all knew that you had meant something special to Azula, to Toph, maybe to Mai, and yes, maybe even to me, everyone just hid their feelings and never let go."

She took a breath and then looked up, meeting his eyes fearlessly.

"But you want to know why, when Koh came to me with a plan in place to deal with you, I took him up on it?"

"If you're done mourning," Sasuke said coldly, seemingly unfazed by what she had just said. Katara very nearly was thrown off by his brutal demeanor, but she knew that, with Soza missing, he wasn't in the mood for her to try and guilt trip him.

Shame, because that's exactly what I'm about to do.

"I took him on it because of the one person I care most about."

Finally, Sasuke seemed to catch some hint of where she was taking this.

"Aang," he replied simply, and she nodded.

"Aang," she repeated and found herself needing to pace again.

"He was no different then some of the others when it came to hiding feelings regarding you," she growled, starting to walk back and forth again. "I always assumed that it was because of something special the two of you shared, something you had been able to provide him with during those last days of the war that had given him some peace. I know that he was so grateful to you for helping him through that; you had been right, he never should have had to do all that on his own."

She remembered how blind she had been to how much Aang had been hurting back then, and it still hurt to think to her ignorance.

"But it was only when you came back that… that I saw just what it was that was happening with him."

Turning her head, she shot Sasuke a bitter look.

"And don't you dare pretend you haven't noticed what's been going on with him."

Sasuke maintained silence which Katara took as good a sign as any of his confirmation that he was indeed aware of what she was referring to.

"And you know, part of me would be hard pressed to hate you for it," she said, feeling her insides clench. "The way I see him looking at you, that admiration, that affection, that… attraction. I wouldn't care if circumstances weren't the way they are. If I knew it would make him happy, I'd give him up."

She was back in Sasuke's face before she knew it.

"But you're not fucking normal, Sasuke, and worse, you're not healthy. Not for Aang, not for Toph, not for anyone. I can't believe you had the audacity to conceive a child with Ursa when you know just how much hurt, pain, despair, and death seem to follow you like you're their herald."

It was a miracle that she was managing to keep tears from her eyes.

"I knew that if Aang kept following you as loyally as he has, without any regard for his own wellbeing, it… it could wind up badly. I want him to be happy, but I'm not willing to sacrifice his safety just because he likes you the way he does. Everywhere you go, there's conflict. And in the end, you can't avoid it. I know you've tried; I've seen you do all you can to delay it, but even you seem to realize its inevitability. We ran all the way to the north of the world to try and track down some way you could end this fight in the safest way you could, and it led to war anyway. It always will lead to that with you, Sasuke, and I think you know that."

He still said nothing and Katara found herself almost desperately wondering what he was thinking.

"I… I found that I couldn't let Aang be threatened by you any longer. You're a threat, Sasuke, to all of us. But him…"

She found the corners of her mouth pulling sadly.

"I did say it was because I was selfish."

And in the end, that was all it was.

"I can offer you a chance to be free of him. And the people you love to be free of him. Surely you've learned how power incites conflict, and with a being as powerful as him, will not conflict be all he has until the end of his days? Even if not us… forces from his own world would surely come to challenge him, beings with a strength just like his own. That power, that conflict, against this world would be nothing short of utter devastation."

Koh's words still echoed in her head, the ones he had spoken to her the moment before he had shapeshifted into Aang to put the plan into motion, bringing a sickening feeling to Katara's stomach.

Damn him.

But he was right. Regardless of his reasoning, or what his ultimate goal was, Koh was right. Sasuke would always be followed by this conflict. Based on what Kakashi had told them, it had been right there on Sasuke's tail since he was a small child, and it had only gotten worse and worse the older he grew.

And Aang was being pulled right into the midst of it. She had been trying to confront Sasuke about this ever since he had returned and she had seen the glaze in Aang's eyes, but the chance had never been something she was able to find. He had always been with Ursa, and when he wasn't, it was Toph, Azula, Mai, or someone else.

"You betrayed us all… to protect Aang," Sasuke said in a low tone. Katara gave a quick nod of affirmation, trying not to feel as badly as she did about what she had done. For years now, she had found such happiness and purpose by his side and now she was being threatened with the chance of losing him. All those years of feeling complete, of feeling…

Complete… complete?

Her mind was starting to buzz, and she barely even heard Sasuke when he spoke again.

"You think I wanted this? To put any of you in danger? You don't think I've been doing everything I can to fix this?"

Shaking free of the sudden revelation that had come over her, Katara looked at Sasuke to see that he had turned away from her cell.

"You should have just waited. I know I have to end this, and I have every intention of doing so. And when I do, I promise, no more of you will be put in harm's way because of me."

There was a chilling finality to his words and as he started to walk away, Katara found herself walking towards him, not wanting him to go. She reached the bars of her cell and gripped them tight as he moved towards the door. Just as he reached it, he looked back and she at last saw a glint of that hate she had been expecting to see from the moment he had walked in.

"But you might very well have just lost Aang forever. Any maybe alienated yourself from everyone you know. Doubt you thought this one out too well."

A humorless smirk touched his mouth.

"Hope it was worth it."

His words cut brutally at her and she cried out his name a moment before the door slammed shut behind him, leaving her alone and in the dark once more. She had more she wanted to say, to apologize for what she had done to him, for what had happened to Soza, for what nearly had happened to Ursa. How she had abandoned thoughts towards the good of others purely for her own.

No, for Aang's… right?

Her entire body slumping, Katara tried to wrap her mind around the conflicting thoughts that were hammering against one another in her mind. She wanted to know how this was possible, how she could have overlooked something like this, how her emotions had swept her away and kept rationale far enough from her mind to allow this to spiral as it had.

I was just… I wanted to protect him.

And when she realized how much it sounded like she was trying to convince herself of that very fact, she let the tears come. In the dark of the dungeon, there was no one to hear her fall apart.

---

Kyoshi sat on the floor of the room she had awoken in, legs crossed as she did her best to remain upright.

Part of her had expected to awaken back in the spirit world, her consciousness having been blasted back there by Sasuke's savage assault. The memories came back quickly, and Kyoshi had struggled to keep a level head for just a moment. Never had she expected to have been so thoroughly outclassed in battle by him, even with his strength returned to a much more regular level. She supposed it was something of hubris on her part; as Avatar, she had thrown tsunamis, created violent twisters, summoned firestorms, and even split apart islands. That, combined with the spiritual aura she had been granted after reentering a physical state of being was something that she had expected to get her through whatever hardship she might face. But she had never had a chance to even remotely bring her abilities to bear. Sasuke had been far too fast and far too powerful.

And even if I could have gotten off more attacks against him… would they even have done anything?

It was difficult to think objectively on it when she was so used to outclassing any other being, human or spirit in battle, not the other way around.

It doesn't matter. It was never my duty to destroy him. I could have gotten lucky, like in the sky those nights ago, or back in Ba Sing Se, but in essence, he's right where we need him.

Her mind had started to drift then to the reality of her mission and what she was truly trying to accomplish, and for what purpose. She immediately felt her blood start to boil and forced herself to think to other matters pressing her.

She had been lying on the floor when she woke and had found a sphere of flickering energy around her. A brief probing had found that it was elementally based and as such, had been crafted so its inside absorbed any attempt she made to use bending to break free of it. Whatever she drew up, the sphere drew the elements into itself, enforcing its own strength and neutralizing her own efforts. It was truly a most impressive creation and she found herself rather wishing she could speak to Aang about his ventures in crafting new techniques available to only those with an Avatar's abilities. Foolhardy a thought it was, and Kyoshi was hardly able to even manage an attempt at bending regardless.

Her body had suffered an almost calamitous level of damage during her fight with Sasuke and even just the act of sitting up had brought a surge of pain all through her. Though having a physical body granted many advantages, the pain that it could feel was not one of them. Kyoshi had barely been able to see out of one of her eyes, and she had felt cuts and bruises all over her body. Fortunately, being reincarnated such as she was and considering that she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, she had been able to adopt a sitting position and focus her energy entirely on recovering. The healing was slow, but after a time, she started to feel gradually invigorated. Though the pain remained, Kyoshi was practically itching to get out of the elemental cell she was trapped in so that she could get back to Ba Sing Se for what she knew was surely coming.

She needed to know he would keep his promise.

So when the door to the room slowly opened without a sound, Kyoshi immediately let her body slacken somewhat to appear more wounded than she still was. Especially when she saw who had come to pay her a visit, she wondered if she might be able to play this to her advantage.

"So."

That was all Princess Azula said as she gently closed the door behind her. In the dim light that was offered by the elemental prison's energies, she was cast in an almost eerie sort of way; her movements seemed predatory, her sleek and lean body drawing her slowly forwards. Kyoshi found it regrettable that so mad and twisted a woman could look quite so beautiful. She wondered what it would have taken for Sasuke to have actually stayed with her all those years ago, or if her personality and mindset would never have allowed for a relationship between them.

"So," she repeated, standing only feet from where Kyoshi was being held. Regarding her, the Avatar said nothing, finding she was quite curious why she was being visited alone.

"Sasuke didn't finish the job," the princess murmured, her voice as smooth as venom. "After what you've done, I find that quite… surprising."

"I suppose he must have been stopped," Kyoshi replied in a level tone. "I can't imagine he would have stopped striking me on his own."

Though she had paid attention to Sasuke's companions only as much as was necessary, Azula was a person who genuinely intrigued her. Such obsessiveness, such passion, such desire, such cruelty; it was rather shocking that she hadn't made to dethrone or murder her brother for his place in power. And too, what she had done to Sasuke himself.

"You took my daughter," Azula said softly, her fingers slowly curled and uncurled as though she were slowly grabbing something invisible and releasing it again. "You made to kill her, and my mother."

"I can't imagine your man will let that slide for long," Kyoshi said, testing the waters. Though she knew good and well that Azula and Sasuke were not together, feigning a touch of ignorance might rile up the princess more than she already seemed to be. Curiously though, Azula barely seemed to notice her words. She drew nearer to the flickering sphere and reached a hand out, just barely running it past the surface as though stroking it. Close as she was, Kyoshi could see the torrent of emotion raging in her eyes, even though Azula's face was deeply calm.

"I didn't think I would ever have a chance like this," Azula murmured. "You were always such a… tantalizing prize in the back of my mind."

"I'm flattered," Kyoshi said, but the princess didn't seem to notice her remark.

"In truth, I would have waited an eternity for this," she nearly whispered. "I told you, didn't I? That I would show you why a ghost of the past like you ought to have stayed dead."

Feeling that she was closer to her goal than she might have even known, Kyoshi opted to play it up, letting herself visibly wince as she looked up at Azula from where she was sitting.

"Aren't you going to ask me where your daughter is?"

Azula slowly gave her head a shake.

"I know what your purpose is. I know your resolve. If you weren't willing to tell Sasuke, I can't imagine you'd tell me."

Blue fire snapped to life in the palm of her hand.

"But that's alright," she said, an almost manic smile working its way onto her face. "That will make it so much easier to focus on nothing more than hurting you until you're begging for death."

With that, she reached out and pressed her fire to the elemental prison and, as though a seal had been shattered, the sphere faded away.

In the room, the only light was from the palm of fire that Azula held, and the only sound was that of it crackling. For a single, tense moment, the two women regarded one another in the flickering azure glow. Then, Kyoshi acted.

Throwing aside her weakened and wounded façade, she drew up a swell of airbending and slammed Azula with it, sending the princess crashing into the wall behind her. Before her body had even hit the ground, the Avatar had whirled, slamming a fist into the ground and with a booming crack, the wall exploded outwards. The light of the pale sky spilled into the now ruined room and without so much as a look back, Kyoshi leapt forward and drew up her bending and spiritual energy to send her blasting away from the palace.

Within seconds, she was over the city, seconds more, over the harbor, and just after that, she was out over the bay. She risked a glance back over her shoulder as she shot across the water after the army she had ordered to retreat in her last moments before being taken down by Sasuke. Half-expecting to see him soaring after her, she found that all she could see was the Northern Water Tribe disappearing into the distance.

Stupid girl.

She couldn't believe that she could have gotten so lucky, but in truth, it made sense. Leave her in the same building with a person as unhinged as Princess Azula, and something was bound to not go according to plan. It was stupid of them not to have kept a closer eye on her and now, she was heading back quickly towards Ba Sing Se.

No, she hadn't killed the woman Ursa, and no, Sasuke was not trussed and being carried over her shoulder, but it didn't matter. In the end, he would have to see reason. With the child in their hands, it would only be a matter of time.

---

Azula picked herself off the ground with a growl at the aching she now felt in the back of her head and back. Straightening, she brushed herself off, scowling at the dirt and debris that had accumulated on her after Avatar Kyoshi's hasty retreat. Stalking to the hole that had been blown open in the wall, she glared out into the sky and saw a blue speck of light getting further and further out of sight. Azula stepped over the rubble and out into the despicably cold air, crossing her arms as she did. It brought the hairs on her arms and neck to rise, and she pulled a face at the frigidity of it. She couldn't wait until she was free of this frozen hellscape.

"Are you alright?"

She turned her head slightly to speak over her shoulder.

"Fine. It would seem she was just as ready to take to the skies as you imagined."

Sasuke melted out from the shadows, a look of deepest focus on his face. It was hard not for Azula to not want to throw her arms around him then and there, and in another time, she might very well have done that. But thoughts to the cabin and to her mother steadied her, regardless of her feelings.

Moving to stand beside her, Sasuke too set his eyes on the fading light that was Kyoshi. His plan had gone off without a hitch, from knocking out the general that had been guarding the room, to Azula's front as being there to hurt Kyoshi, to the Avatar taking flight as he had predicted.

"I couldn't have imagined she wouldn't be. She doesn't have any idea that I'm capable of this, and she'll play right into my hand without knowing."

Azula genuinely didn't know if she had expected this to work, but more so even then that, she had gone along with Sasuke's plan without even knowing what his endgame was. She still didn't. He had come to her quietly and intensely, asking for her help and she had gone along with it without a second thought. Maybe it was because he was the only one she knew who seemed to have some sort of plan. Maybe it was because couldn't bear the thought of sitting around while her daughter was taken further and further from her.

Or maybe it was because a part of her just couldn't say no to Sasuke.

"How long do you think it will take?" she inquired, and he cocked his head slightly back and forth.

"Not sure, but I'd bet by tonight, it'll be time."

He shook his head in a consternated sort of way.

"I have to be sure… I have to know. Kyoshi is…"

He sighed.

"I have to know."

Azula said nothing in reply to this, mostly because she wasn't sure she trusted herself to speak. She didn't know still what it was that Sasuke was talking about (time for what?) and to boot, there were a plethora of other things she wanted to ask Sasuke, but somehow, none of them seemed to want to reach her mouth.

What they had just done would no doubt land them in a heap of trouble with the others and with the chief himself. This could very well be seen as a treasonous act and she wondered if Sasuke had any plans on how to deal with something like that.

She felt herself twitch with surprise as she felt something brush against her and she looked down to see Sasuke take her hand in his. Taking it and locking eyes intently with her, he spoke again.

"I will find Soza. I'll bring her back to you. I promise."

Azula looked between their hands and his eyes, not entirely sure of what to feel, or even what she wanted to feel. The burning within her wanted to break into a hungry smile and squeeze his hand tightly back, reveling at the feeling of having Sasuke by her side doing precisely what it was that she wanted.

But just like the words she had wanted to speak, that feeling was barely a thought at all and before she knew it, she had leaned forward and rested her forehead down against his shoulder. She didn't hug him and neither did he her, but Sasuke didn't pull away either.

"And then what?" she asked quietly, the question coming to her in a strange automatic sort of way. "They'll keep coming for her. For mother. For you."

Her possessiveness reared its head then and Azula was suddenly possessed with the desire to burn apart the world until every threat to the people she had found she very much cared about was scorched away.

Sasuke's reply not only calmed her, but she couldn't help but from feeling her deep attraction to him rise dramatically in her gut. His voice fueled the burning cinders for her love for him that had never truly gone out, even when she had thought it had. For a moment, it was just as it had been back then when they were so much younger, and all Azula wanted was to be at his side.

"Simple. I'm going to destroy them all."